Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 1324 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Okay. Thanks.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Minister, you have touched on this already, but since you were last before us, the University of Edinburgh has written out to staff to say that it needs to find £140 million. All the press coverage has pointed towards the £15 million fund being for Dundee, but is it actually for all institutions across Scotland that might ask for support? Am I right in my view of the answer that you gave us in that respect?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Miles Briggs
I do not know whether the minister heard the question that I put to the SFC witnesses earlier. I asked about their monitoring and about the data reports that they get. I did not get an answer about any other institutions that would be of concern. The minister has now been at the committee twice to answer questions about this. I am not asking him to name them, but are there any other institutions that are in a similar position and that are reporting to Government that they are likely to write to members of their staff about that? I would like to get a picture of what Scotland’s university sector looks like now.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Okay, thanks.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Miles Briggs
This all started with the University of Dundee, but last week, we heard about the concerns that were being sent around University of Edinburgh staff with regard to its financial situation. Have other institutions approached you, either formally or informally, to express concern about where they are? What is your current assessment of where university finances sit?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 5 March 2025
Miles Briggs
Is it only Dundee and Edinburgh universities that are having to do that at the moment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Miles Briggs
Good morning, Professor McKendrick, and thanks for joining us today.
I want to carry on the line of questioning that George Adam and Keith Brown have pursued, because I am interested in hearing, from your experience and from what you have had the chance to look at, what unintended consequences and admissions behaviours the targets have delivered.
You outlined well how, in some cases, we have set universities up to fail because they have not been able to achieve the targets. However, are we creating a situation in which, because we have the targets, we are also setting young people up to fail? We can tick a box to say that we got them into university for year 1, but we are not sustaining them all to graduation.
I have seen some of the great work that is going on with care-experienced young people in Edinburgh. That is a great model, but we are talking about a different model for the wider student population. What is your view on that—specifically, on the point that the approach has driven admissions behaviours to change, but not necessarily to deliver the outcomes for which we hope?
10:15Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Miles Briggs
I know that I am putting you on the spot by asking about different institutions but, following Professor Peter Mathieson’s message to staff at the University of Edinburgh, which basically said that radical action will be needed to find £140 million of savings, I have received a number of communications from constituents who work there. Unions have described that as suggesting that there will be devastating cuts and a lot of people who work in the institution are worried about their jobs and futures.
I know that you cannot comment on individual universities, but is that now a sector-wide issue? We have already discussed the University of Dundee. What is your understanding of university finances across Scotland? We now seem to be seeing a drip, drip, drip effect across institutions, which is deeply worrying for staff and raises questions about the future sustainability of such an important sector of our economy.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Miles Briggs
Good morning, Professor McKendrick, and thanks for joining us today.
I want to carry on the line of questioning that George Adam and Keith Brown have pursued, because I am interested in hearing, from your experience and from what you have had the chance to look at, what unintended consequences and admissions behaviours the targets have delivered.
You outlined well how, in some cases, we have set universities up to fail because they have not been able to achieve the targets. However, are we creating a situation in which, because we have the targets, we are also setting young people up to fail? We can tick a box to say that we got them into university for year 1, but we are not sustaining them all to graduation.
I have seen some of the great work that is going on with care-experienced young people in Edinburgh. That is a great model, but we are talking about a different model for the wider student population. What is your view on that—specifically, on the point that the approach has driven admissions behaviours to change, but not necessarily to deliver the outcomes for which we hope?
10:15Education, Children and Young People Committee
Widening Access to Higher Education
Meeting date: 26 February 2025
Miles Briggs
I mentioned retention rates earlier. The SFC’s report on widening access shows a decrease among all students, but that has happened more quickly in SIMD 20 and, more worryingly, among care-experienced young people, despite the good work that has gone on to sustain them in relation to not just learning, but the wraparound care at college and university. What work is being done to take that forward?
From speaking to students, I know that they want to learn and earn, but the timetables sometimes do not work for them in that way. They need to earn money, so they are not going into college courses. What work is going on in the sector to consider taking a holistic approach, such as by bringing course time together so that someone does not need to study all week long and there is more flexibility for them?
